Nobody moved.
My eyes filled, but this time I did not look down.
Henrietta opened the Birkin on her arm.
She pulled out a stack of hundred-dollar bills with a bank band still around them and threw it at my mother’s feet.
“Here. Buy her a specialist. Buy yourselves a bus ticket out of Oakdale. And stay away from my family.”
The bills slapped the floor.
My mother bent slowly.
For a second, I thought she was going to pick up the money.
She picked up one torn piece of paper instead.
The corner with my father’s name.
She straightened.
My mother is five foot three.
She had been awake since five the previous morning.
She smelled like soap and exhaustion.
But when she lifted her head, she looked about seven feet tall.
“Henrietta,” she said. “You have been in my daughter’s life for seventeen years, and you never once learned her name.”
